161 results for author: Dave Svetlik

PUBLIC BANKING UNIT V: THE BANK OF NORTH DAKOTA PRESENT

In 2009, in the midst of the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, only one state ran a large budget surplus, cut personal and business taxes, and had the lowest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the nation. North Dakota. Quoting from the “Public Banking Legislative Guide” by the Public Banking Institute in 2011, during some of the worst times of the Great Recession: “While lawmakers across the country struggle with difficult, even heart-breaking budget dilemmas, the North Dakota legislature debates whether to cut taxes or increase services. True, North Dakota has some good things going for it, such as ...

PHARMACEUTICALS AS A PUBLIC UTILITY UNIT III: PRIVATE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY – HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

“Following the lead of pharma-friendly Rep. Richard Neal, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee this week crushed several progressive amendments to a House drug pricing bill that would have expanded the number of medicines covered by the legislation and extended lower costs to the nation's tens of millions of uninsured. The Intercept reported Wednesday that Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, warned his Democratic colleagues against offering any amendments to the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 3) during the committee's markup of the legislation on Tuesday. "We intend to stick with the ...

PUBLIC BANKING UNIT IV: THE BANK OF NORTH DAKOTA PAST

  North Dakota State University Archives By 1915 the farmers and workers of North Dakota had had enough. As the cover of the November, 1916 Nonpartisan Leader above indicates, they were done being run over by corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, the railroad cartel, grain speculators and privately held grain elevators. They were done losing their farms, their homes, and their hope. Led by a charismatic flax farmer, Arthur C. Townley, who himself was facing foreclosure to the Minneapolis branches of the Wall Street banks, they took matters into their own hands. The Nonpartisan League (NPL) was born. Winning state elections in 1916 and ...

PHARMACEUTICALS AS A PUBLIC UTILITY UNIT II: WHO PAYS FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Most of us have heard of the EpiPen – the pharmaceutical corporation Mylan’s trade name for its Epinephrine Autoinjector.  It is a device used to quickly inject the life-saving drug epinephrine into a person undergoing a potentially fatal allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis, to a variety of things such as bee stings, peanuts or other foods, and medications.  It is estimated that over 15 million Americans are subject to food allergies. Some 200,00 actual cases of anaphylaxis resulting in about 200 deaths occur each year. Epinephrine is the industry name for adrenaline, the hormone produced naturally by the human body to allow people to react ...

PHARMACEUTICALS AS A PUBLIC UTILITY UNIT I: BLOOD MONEY

“Eleanor wore a pearl necklace and diamonds in her hair, gifts from Franklin’s rich Delano relatives. Even though Franklin had never made much money himself, Teddy knew that he would be able to care for his new wife: FDR was heir to the huge Delano opium fortune. Franklin’s grandfather Warren Delano had for years skulked around the [China’s] Pearl River Delta dealing drugs.” “The Delanos were not alone. Many of New England’s great families made their fortunes dealing drugs in China. The Cabot family of Boston endowed Harvard with opium money, while Yale’s famous Skull and Bones society was funded by the biggest American opium ...

PUBLIC BANKING UNIT III: THE ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC BANKING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpho-eie-fw   When we begin to see money as a public utility – Money becomes our Servant rather than our Master   Across the nation we watch as our roads and bridges, our public schools, our public water and sewer systems, our public parks and public buildings fall into disrepair. And across the nation we hear cities and states cry out - - “WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY.”  It is the classic budget problem and the solutions for “we the people” are always austerity. They are always painful, ugly, and, in the long run, only exacerbate the issues: Cut spending Raise taxes Sell off ...

PUBLIC BANKING – UNIT II: THE COST OF “INTEREST”

Let us assume a state needs to replace an aging bridge on one of its state highways. If the contractor’s bid for supplying the materials and completing the construction is two million dollars, the tax payers of that state will eventually pay close to four million dollars for the bridge. How can this possibly be? The answer in a word is - - “interest.” The near doubling of the cost of most public projects, from bridges, to schools, to water and sewage systems, is the result of the legal process of fractional reserve banking through which the quasi-public US Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) and the private banking industry loan most of the ...

PUBLIC BANKING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VkkCQyoRfY UNIT I: FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING [blockquote size="full|half|third|fourth|two-thirds|three-fourths" align="left"]We have all heard the saying – “money doesn’t grow on trees.” It’s actually much simpler than this. Money grows by tapping keys on a computer.[/blockquote] As the above video by the Philadelphia branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) indicates, money is created out of thin air by the private banking industry through a process called “fractional reserve banking.” We all find this difficult to believe. It defies our “household budget” logic. How can money be ...

MODERN MONETARY THEORY UNIT III: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING FUNDS TAXES

Imagine for a moment that this popularly held belief is true – that the US Federal Government has no money of its own and depends on taxes to fund any government spending. Think about this. Ask yourself the obvious question. If the US Federal government has no money of its own and depends on tax dollars for its operation, where did the tax dollars people pay each year come from in the first place? Well, we would all answer, “I work hard for my wages or salary and part of the money I earn is taken away from me to pay my federal and state taxes. That’s where federal tax dollars come from!” But then the question must be asked, “Where did our ...

MODERN MONETARY THEORY UNIT II: THE MONETARY SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES

The US Government cannot run out of money any more than Lambeau Field can run out of points during a Packer game. Quoting former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), Ben Bernanke, during a 2009 interview with Scott Pelley on CBS 60 Minutes: (PELLEY): “Is that tax money the Fed is spending?” (BERNANKE): “It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed much the same way that you have an account with a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed.” In 1944 as World War II was coming to an end, Europe and Japan were in economic ...